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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26649919">Representational Aesthetics</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/DaLaRi/pseuds/ElectricKettle'>ElectricKettle (DaLaRi)</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman &amp; Terry Pratchett</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Dialogue Heavy, Established Relationship, Genderweird Crowley, M/M, One of Az's Most Endearing Qualities is He Has No Idea How Others Experience Him, Queer Culture</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 10:00:21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,263</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26649919</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/DaLaRi/pseuds/ElectricKettle</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Aziraphale thinks he has "hot dad energy." Crowley firmly disagrees.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>36</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Representational Aesthetics</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I do consider the silliest thing I've ever written, but I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>I think, Aziraphale said one day, that I have hot dad energy</p><p>Crowley, peering at a periodical to look for the errors in the typeface he’d gotten shipped to the printers, peered up at him from over his reading sunglasses.</p><p>What?</p><p>I have been a homosexual on the Almighty’s green earth for six millennia and I have finally figured out what my “energy” is.</p><p>And you think it’s “hot dad energy.”</p><p>Yes, Aziraphale said, certainty flowing out of him like physical divine light.</p><p>Well I completely disagree. You’ve been sitting squarely in “repressed academic homosexual” for the past at least 2000 years.</p><p>I disagree! I’m nowhere near… nebbish enough for that. I, he said pleasedly, have gravitas.</p><p>You run a bookshop of first editions in SoHo.</p><p>Yes, and I go to farmer’s markets. And I’m also a child’s godparent.</p><p>First of all, you go to farmer’s markets only because we walk through them on the way to the <em>literal Ritz</em>, and second of all you wear tiny wire rimmed spectacles. You don’t even qualify for hot granddad energy.</p><p>I think you have me mistaken. Not a flannel hot dad, you understand. But a rural, beekeeping hot dad. Who the children’s tutor is desperately in love with but will never tell.</p><p>Is the tutor a man?</p><p>What—of course the tutor is a man, Crowley. This isn’t the sound of music, for heaven’s sake.</p><p>See, I think where you’re mistaken is thinking that anyone, any human person on this planet, would look at you and think “now there’s a man I trust around children.” You have a—</p><p>If you bring up the aura of incompetence again I swear I’ll—</p><p>It’s the aura of incompetence! I’m sorry Aziraphale, but you just have it.</p><p>I’m not speaking to you.</p><p>Now me, however, I feel like I have incredibly strong ex-wife energy.</p><p>Oh, naturally.</p><p>But if I had to pick a masculine energy, I think I’d be “cool teacher.”</p><p>Crowley?</p><p>Yeah?</p><p>That is so far from true that I actually don’t think I can articulate it to you.</p><p>You don’t think I’m cool?</p><p>No I <em>do</em> that you’re cool. That’s rather the problem. <em>I</em> think you’re cool. And now I’m seeing the problem with the hot dad energy.</p><p>Right. You’re a weirdo.</p><p>‘Weirdo’ is a bit harsh.</p><p>No I mean in a gay, taxonomic sense. Queer as in oddity.</p><p>Ahh, yes, yes. I see what you mean.</p><p>I think that we both are just far too strange to ever have that farmer’s market wholesome energy. If you ever were to keep bees, people would be sure you were keeping body parts in the hives.</p><p>We are… somewhat offputting to humans, aren’t we?</p><p>Not any more than taxonomic weirdos are to them. We scan, they—the farmer’s market types—just don’t like it is all. We attract the weirdos.</p><p>In the taxonomic sense?</p><p>No, more generally. We, somehow, have ended up with a number of straight friends.</p><p>Although they all are absolute oddities—ah I see what you mean.</p><p>Right. Like attracts like, and in our case, “like” means “not quite odd enough that you can’t believe we exist, but definitely a sign the world is weirder than you thought it was.”</p><p>I like that. Expanding hearts and minds.</p><p>Not quite, but I’ll leave that quibble to you.</p><p>But, within that subset, I do still maintain I have hot dad energy.</p><p>What on earth makes you think you have hot dad energy.</p><p>It’s just a certain… energy, I don’t know how to explain it Crowley.</p><p>You just feel that your energy is that of a hot dad.</p><p>Yes!</p><p>Well, nobody we know fills that role, so I guess in the absence of a clear competitor, yes, of the people we know you do have the most “hot dad energy.”</p><p>Except for maybe you.</p><p>Come on. I have way too much genderweird energy going on to read as “hot dad.”</p><p>No, there’s a certain rock star type hot dad energy that I think one could argue you carry off incredibly well.</p><p>Well I abdicate whatever crown you’re trying to put on my head in favor of ex-wife energy.</p><p>No Crowley, you misunderstand me. I think our “couple energy” is “pair of hot dads.”</p><p>Aziraphale.</p><p>What?</p><p>Tell me you’re joking.</p><p>I’m not! I genuinely think we, in the right crowd, come off as two hot dads in a relationship with one another!</p><p>I cannot articulate to you how completely and utterly untrue that is. No company in the world or adjacent to it can make <em>us</em> look like hot dads.</p><p>We are <em>infinitely</em> more competent than either Heaven or Hell—</p><p>I wouldn’t go saying that with your chest.</p><p>And, for beings of our nature, we care about children far more than I honestly sometimes think we were designed to.</p><p>Perils of hanging out with humans. What’s your point.</p><p>Of any set of partnered angels, I think we are the closest divine and occult beings get to hot dad energy.</p><p>Are you implying that Almighty Herself can’t manage anything closer to the energy than us?</p><p>Angels are brittle materials. Bend us too far and we break.</p><p>Demons are fluid as anything, even if we, some of us, were something like angels once. I’m sure there’s a demon couple out there somewhere with more hot dad energy than us. Absolutely certain.</p><p>Aziraphale looked very put out. Crowley flipped through the magazine some more, but he wasn’t really looking at the kerning.</p><p>Sorry to crush your dreams, angel.</p><p>I just think that, as homosexuals, it’s our right to have any energy we want to.</p><p>Oh, no question about it. And if you want to dress in flannels and dye your hair dark and grow facial hair, I’m not going to be the one to stop you. But there’s no need to reach for it.</p><p>There’s no advent calendars for repressed academic homosexuals.</p><p>Crowley barked a laugh, sitting up.</p><p>Is <em>that</em> what this is all about?</p><p>What? No!!</p><p>Crowley looked at him.</p><p><em>Yes</em>. Fine. It’s not as if it even matters.</p><p>Crowley set aside the magazine and moved over to sit on that arm of Aziraphale’s chair. Aziraphale leaned into him subconsciously, even though he was very pointedly not looking at him.</p><p>If you want me to make a repressed academic advent calendar a reality, angel, there is no reason why Hell can’t make your dreams come true. Almighty knows we’ve done worse things for less.</p><p>I just—the hot dad aesthetics are <em>so good.</em> It’s so hard to capture aesthetics of desire and repression and eroticism-by-proxy in a visual form. Security and solidity and self-possession translate perfectly into representational media.</p><p>So this is an academic pursuit?</p><p>Absolutely not.</p><p>So?</p><p>I just feel like it would look silly.</p><p>Aziraphale.</p><p>What?</p><p>Advent calendars always look silly. And any aesthetic, if it takes itself seriously enough, can become dignified. It’s all force of intent.</p><p>I really do want to make it happen. I am still terribly put out that I never collected enough of the radical queer zine scene to have a true first edition printing set.</p><p>Are advent calendars your new queer media white whale?</p><p>I don’t think so. But with media changing how fast it does these days, it feels like I should be collecting <em>something</em>.</p><p>Well, advent calendars are as good as anything.</p><p>That’s what I had thought.</p><p>I’ll see who I can call to get this to happen.</p><p>Homosexuals only, Crowley. None of the picturesque family nonsense.</p><p>Aziraphale. I’ve been queer as long as you have. Of course I’m only calling homosexuals.</p>
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